I want to talk about commitment and how I progress a lot in commitments and things.

And, this one I'm going to tell you a story about ‘paint' because we need to paint our house. It's all white. We chose ‘ceiling white' basically for every white in our house. Every wall is just bright white because I didn't like any other color that they had for the walls and you only get to pick one color, because it's not a complete custom build. It's a semi custom build. 

That led me to Lowe's where I picked up all these paint samples. That is a commitment, right? I basically walked in and spend some time, picked out some colors, and then I went and stuck them on the walls with painter's tape. I stared at them for awhile and I was like, “Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no”. And then I went and had a consultation at Sherwin Williams because I needed more help.

What I found was that this color that I really liked for some stuff, which is very dark, almost black, is actually a kind of green. I didn't notice it until she put it up next to an ‘iron ore' color. So I had a new comparison point.

Now in my commitment of choosing what is my house is going to get painted, I have narrowed the options. Discussed it with my husband. There's another consultation, getting some information, gathering information, talking to some professionals, talking to family, husbands, and well now I've moved on to paint boards.

I've painted the different colors on to a very white board that I picked up at three for a buck and it's becoming very clear.  So that's what I do. I take them and paint them. And so these little boards are slightly bigger commitment. It costs me $4 per sample, five with the paintbrush. I went from free free paint samples to 35 bucks plus a couple bucks for the board. So about $40 to that project to see what I like.

But now that I've taken these baby steps…  I've consulted , I've put them on a board, I'm staring at them a while and I've sat with this decision… I am ready to commit.  I know what paint colors I want.

Have professionals do it because you don't want you doing it. It's not cute. My older maid, when she moved in for the first time, I started painting my walls. It's really dark, gorgeous teal color, but I got some of the ceiling. I didn't care. She just moved in and she had to touch it up because it drove her crazy. It would drive me crazy in my new home, but back then I didn't care. So I will hire professionals, but I'm doing all this for just a few thousand dollars commitment.

So when it comes to something bigger, like deciding on what niche to enter or deciding who to be my business partner, who to partner with, I feel like you need to still do these steps, these little micro commitments and have the conversations and talk to other people and just get some more input in on things because if you try to do it all on your own then you're going to get lost. It's going to be overwhelming.

Like my business partner and I, we're splitting, but we've been partners in some shape form or fashion for almost seven years. It started small. About 10 years ago, we were friends, we talked about digital marketing, then we did a small project together, actually not a small project. We did a bigger project together and then we kept doing projects together. Then he thought we should be business partners and so we gave it a six month trial. 

That was years of working together before we actually committed to that.  I told him that I was scared of having staff and told him about just my general fears and what I wanted to do. We talked through all this thing.

So if you're having trouble committing, maybe just take a step back and ask, “Did you skip a step in the progress of what you needed to commit to?”

Yes, I use paint as an example today, but, it's still the same process.

Start with something small, hopefully free… put it up…  live with it for a minute… get to something bigger like lovely boards… see how it feels… live with it a little bit longer… talk to some people and then commit and say yes. Then just make it happen.

All right, hope that, that was fun. And you want to know what paint color I'm choosing because I don't know yet. No, I'm teasing. So I think we're going with iron ore. 😅😅😅